Movie Review: My Sister’s Keeper

I know of only two noncommercial movies over the coming week, probably because the Fourth of July is presumed to subvert every other schedule. But this very night, the Alfresco series offers Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's part of the Grindhouse double feature; this is the less-often-shown half, not the one with Rose Magowan's machine gun leg. Death Proof shows tonight at 8 at The Brickyard, 129 North Rock Island. And Tuesday, the Blank Page has its usual Tuesday feature half an hour early, at 7, to allow your truly to give an introduction; the feature is La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini's superhit of 1961, a three-hour spectacle about decadent life in modern Rome.

And commercially, we have a surprisingly unsentimental look at a very sentimental subject in My Sister's Keeper.

Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric's daughter Sofia Vassilieva has leukemia, and Abigail Breslin has been conceived and born literally as a source of transfusions and transplants for her; now eleven years have passed, and time has come for a kidney transplant, and Breslin is drawing the line to the extent of suing her parents for medical independence from her parents, so they can't make her go along with the transplant; Alec Baldwin is her lawyer and Joan Cusack is the judge. It's an impressive cast, and everybody, including Thomas Dekker as the love interest, is in top form.

Vassilieva is aware that her disease is tearing her whole family apart; divorce is threatened, and Mom Cameron Diaz is so far into denial that she pretty much loses our sympathy at times. It may seem that Breslin is given too little story time, but be patient and you may realize why. If Breslin wins, Vassilieva will certainly die, and Diaz cannot face the possibility of that. What's more, she expects Breslin and everybody else to share her fanaticism on this subject, to the point that she is willing to have Breslin operated on by force, which is the crisis situation in My Sister's Keeper.

To keep this unbearable situation watchable, screenwriter Jeremy Leven and writer-director Nick Cassavetes keep jumping from character to character and present to past, never lingering over anything long enough to allow sentimentality to take over completely; I emerged dry eyed, but it was a close squeak, and you want to have a handkerchief a the ready. Leukemia here is not one of those Hollywood diseases whose only symptom is a beautified death, and there are bald heads and red eyes and grey skins and a good deal of vomiting, sometimes under embarrassing circumstances. And there is, I should maybe add, a surprising lack of religion or any other kind of hope. Except for Diaz, everybody keeps emotions in check pretty well, almost too well, you might temporarily think. But the characters are attractive and the situation awful enough; we don't need emphasis, especially because there is no subplot that removes us from the tragic scene.

You have to admire My Sister's Keeper for rare integrity and restraint, but it hardly makes for enjoyable watching; some subjects shouldn't. And consolation is for you to seek out; I'm not sure I found any. Except that I find it encouraging that Cassavetes and Diaz and company dared to risk making such a movie.